Civilization Stage keeps the real-time strategy format like with the Tribal Stage. Controlling creature units are abandoned for the vehicles as the primary units while huts are progressively being replaced with the cities-though some are still tribal. The primary goal throughout the stage is to capture and claim every rivaling nations' city scattered throughout the homeworld, focusing on interactions, either religiously, economically, or violently, between their civilization and other civilizations. Influenced by the player's prior trait, the player will form the starting city with a specific specialty passed by the prior Tribal Stage's trait: Friendly, Industrious, and Aggressive tribes will form the Religious, Economic, and Military cities respectively. Then promptly from the start of the stage, rival nations will emerge and guarantee two structure types, with three specialties that will influence the perspective towards the player and other rivaling nations.
Unlike simplified relationship in preceding stages, the Civilization Stage is more refined, attributed by set of modifiers that affect the meter of the relationship from hostile to ally. Taking any actions may add modifiers, for instance, complimenting, trading, etc will raise the relationship bar from modifiers, whereas insulting, invading, or threatening will lower the relationship between the nation.
Other factors like the food currency are replaced with Sporebucks which can be earned by a variety of actions like the production from factories in the cities, captured spice geysers, trading, or being gifted by allies and used on spending on buying more vehicles, buildings, consequence abilities, and gifting other nations to boost relationship. The new mechanic is to contact other nations within their cities by clicking on the "Contact" button or after a rival nation captures 2 cities, the window appears to the side of the map. In the window of contact, the creature of the nation offers the dialogue to the right and the player has the options of complementing, insulting, offering gifts to raise the relationship between the nation, and even commission to propose war against other nations' cities.
A vehicle and a spice refiner in the Civilization Stage.
Spice Geysers are also scattered throughout the homeworld from land to sea, as well as can be claimed as the established territory and source of Sporebucks. Geysers that are already occupied by rivaling nations can be captured, though it will sour the relationship between the nations.
Pirate B Gone: Reduces the frequency of pirate raids
The Civilization stage is the first of the four preliminary stages to alter the nature of the trait cards. Whereas in previous stages, Green and Red represented opposite approaches to game-play with Blue representing a balance of the two, Green, Red, and Blue all represent unique ways to play the game. As such, the player's timeline in Civilization is reorganized, placing the strategy which they entered the phase from in the center, with the other two on the extremes.
Build multiple fast vehicles while the game is paused. Select each one to go after a spice geyser, then unpause the game and claim as many spice geysers as possible before other civilizations appear. Your priority should be to capture a city with a seaport as it will grant access to the ocean and faster actions with other nations.
Not only can you collect spice geysers, but you can destroy tribes. If you are aiming for an aggressive stat or an easy start, then you should buy fast land vehicles and get each one after a tribe. You may also get free vehicles from those tribes or even money.
Switching vehicles is very useful. For example, you can make your vehicle very fast to arrive at a certain point then make it a slow vehicle with other good stats.
The Civilization stage on Hard is quite difficult. The reason for this is that in Hard mode the relationship penalties for being a large nation, or having your borders too close, are very big. This makes it difficult to improve your relationship and can easily get you in war when you don't want to.
General[]
Once you advance to the Civilization Stage, pause immediately and create 3-4 land vehicles with max speed, or 1 sea vehicle and 2 land vehicles with max speed. Then un-pause and immediately capture all nearby spice geysers on land and water and plunder every possible tribe for extra money and/or vehicles.
Optimize your city layout as much as possible. Assuming with at least 1 level of happiness, the maximum income for a large city with full buildings to reach is 3,600/min for Military, 4,000-4,400/min for Economy, and 4,400-4,800/min for Religious.
Economic[]
It can take a long time to finish if the you wish to finish the Civilization Stage as Economic, as you need to buy the majority of other cities in order to get you the blue card. And if you didn't finish Tribal Stage as Industrious, it's almost impossible to achieve the Economic card. Therefore, you should not attempt capturing other cities with military/religious vehicle, as this will irreversibly make them enemies and prevent you from starting any trade route.
Immediately start trading with all nearby cities with a blue face and compliment all nations with a yellow face. For maximum income per trip, focus purely on economic power and speed when designing/choosing the vehicle. Do not buy the cities when the economic takeover bar is full as they will eventually be captured by other nations, and buying them too early will very likely get you in war for being a big nation. Once they are conquered, give gifts to the nation that just captured them and keep doing so until the relation bonus reaches 15 or higher, you can then trade with them. Again, do not buy them, just keep the trade routes for money.
At some point, other nations will ask you to stop such trading, whether or not should you accept depends on the strength of your trading partner: If they are weak, you should accept their request (don't ask for money as doing this will only give a very small bonus). If your trading partner still packs a punch, turn down their request and keep the trading routes. But whatever you do, you should always give more gifts to the nation you just upset and prevent them from dropping to an orange face.
Eventually, there will be one powerhouse nation (usually a military one, but it can sometimes be a religious nation) on the planet that can potentially wipe out all other nations. Give them more gifts to keep them allied and pay them to attack the remaining cities, They will be spamming aircrafts at this point, which costs a lot of money, so bribe them as often as possible to help them build up a formidable army. Once all other nations are gone, buy 3 more cities from your ally and pay the highest bid possible so the "You were generous" bonus can be high enough to offset the drop brought by "Your nation is too big" and "Your borders are too close". They will ask for a merge when you own 4 cities, which turns all their cities into economic ones and counts as economic takeover.
Military[]
Immediately start attacking the nation with a yellow/orange face on your continent. You don't need to actually capture their cities, just focus on destroying their factories and turrets, you can also try to capture their spice derricks to furthermore slow them down. If possible, always have a mobile defending group to protect any nearby economic cities, which will supply you with some extra money through trading and make them your allies.
Once this nation is no longer able to field more vehicles, capture their cities, this should be relatively easy as they don't have money to add more buildings/vehicles and their cities won't stand for too long without enough buildings. If neither your city nor this target city has a seaport (which rarely happens), you will have to capture those friendly cities in order to take the battle to other opposing nations. Once you have access to sea vehicles, capture all cities with seaports as fast as possible to deny future naval assaults on your cities. And once all cities with seaports are under your control, you can finish the rest at your own pace.
Note that taking over a city through military forces will destroy (nearly) all buildings inside, and you will need to rebuild everything. If you don't have enough money to rebuild a captured city, don't capture them until your economy catches up.
Religious[]
The strategy for a Religious city is overall identical to Military, but with some differences. Religious vehicles deal little (but area) damage, it will be a major problem when dealing with opposing military nations. So if the opposing nation on your continent is a military one, wait until they capture other cities, and then immediately convert the city that just got captured - due to the lack of buildings, this city will fall much faster and you will be able to use it as a frontal base to field vehicles.
If it's an opposing religious nation, you should try to convert their initial city immediately, they don't have much buildings inside early on and therefore your religious vehicles can focus more on conversion. This will take quite a while and you will probably need to send a few waves to eventually convert it, but you get another city without having to rebuild and possibly save an economic city on your continent, so the payout is worth the risk.
Religious vehicles can temporarily tame wild Epic creatures (identified by musical notes orbiting above their heads), they will follow the religious vehicles around and attack enemy vehicles/cities when you attack them, and when they become hostile again, they usually don't go back to where they spawn and will instead stay near where the taming effect expires. Enemy nations will never attack/tame Epic creatures in most situations, nor will they guide their vehicles away from Epic creatures if they are in the way, so Epic creatures can be used to your advantage by luring them to some places that your enemies must go through.
Once all opposing nations on your continent are gone, you can usually finish the rest at your own pace, as nations on other continents are usually busy with each other and won't actively target you.
Other[]
A useful exploit during the Civilization stage is that you can instantly switch the attributes of your vehicles whenever you want. For example, during the start of the game, you can focus your vehicles entirely on speed, and use that to rapidly seize a lot of spice geysers and tribal villages. If you are attacking a defenseless city, you can orient your vehicles entirely toward religious/military power to rapidly take the city - after all, they won't be moving, and they aren't being attacked (unless they are religious, because citizens throw rubble and flaming trash at religious vehicles taking over their city). In the event that enemy vehicles show up, you can just switch them to a mixture of religious/military power and health, then switch them back once the threat is past. Taking advantage of this can give you a nice head start in the early game, and speed up city takeover. Another way is to make speedy vehicles and once they arrive for a takeover switch to Military/Religious power as the dominant stat and it will take over the city at a faster rate.
Another quick fact is that it also instantly reloads their attacks, allowing keen players to deal damage quickly by switching between two strong vehicle types.
Finally, before advancing to Space Stage, make sure all your cities have an optimal building layout and all their Turrets. This way, you don't have to spend money later on building them, and since you start with 100k Sporebucks in the Space Stage no matter what, well, it speaks for itself. Adding Extras will also help, as after you have advanced, you can sell them for 25 Sporebucks each. This may not seem like much, but since each city can hold many of them, possibly 20-50, it really adds up.
Take your time when mapping your city. It may take a while, but it really is worth it in the long run. Remember that Factories are more productive when linked to Houses and the City Hall, but they lower happiness and cancel Entertainment buildings when linked. Entertainment buildings are more effective when linked to City Hall and Houses.
Keep in mind that if you are a military city, you will have to take over the planet by attacking the other cities. This will damage them and make it easier for your enemies to conquest your Homeworld in Space Stage unless you rebuild them.
Owning one spice geyser at the beginning of the civilization stage game is about as good as owning multiple towards the end. Spice geysers start out with giving 1000/min. But, as the game goes on the efficiency will drop. This may be a reference to Earth depleting its natural resources.
If you have an economic city on your continent, you might want to make it a protectorate of your own nation you can trade with it for extra money. To be sure it isn't captured, send at least 5 vehicles to protect it from invaders (economic cities have no defense except turrets).
There are almost always four cities on your continent. You may notice that in hard difficulty, one of them has a blue face. You start out by attacking a nation on your continent that has a yellow face, usually a military city.
On the normal difficulty, there are two nations with blue faces, and you may notice the one with the yellow face usually has the largest military. To prevent it from being a threat in the future and capturing another city, try to capture that city first.
Even with the same power as a land vehicle, a sea vehicle can pack a bigger punch, and an aircraft packs an even bigger punch. For inexpensive power, invest in a powerful navy.
Try to ally at least one civilization and let them attack other cities as well. In the end when you two are the only ones left they might want to join you.
To be able to make boats as soon as possible, finish Creature Stage with a nest by the sea.
There are more tribes at the beginning of the civilization stage than are able to be civilized (nine plus you). Civilizing these tribes will yield free sporebucks or free units to you or the computer.
Certain tribes hurt your vehicles if you try to interact with them, these tribes will have a whole territory border to themselves. These tribes will become the competing civilizations. However, the tribes that don't hurt your vehicles will be in the border of a spice geyser or another city.
If you find defending your cities hard then capture a city but make it religious/military (the city needs to be the trait that you didn't start with) and create a vehicle there with 98% health and 1% speed and attack/power. Then you can spawn lots of them to protect your cities since the computer targets vehicles first. This will buy you some time to get your vehicles over to your cities.
Trivia[]
Religious vehicles attacking an Economic city. Notice that citizens are throwing litter at the vehicles.
Civilization stage can be compared to the near future on Earth, despite the fact that they have only been able to do unmanned suborbital flights in the form of ICBMs, while we have managed to do many manned flights to low Earth orbit and our own Moon. Although your civilization eventually makes it across the entire galaxy. Also, we do not yet have the technology to produce holograms like those of civilization-stage creatures.
When you are converting a city, your religious vehicles appear to lose health gradually. If you look closely at your vehicles, you'll see that the citizens are throwing burning trash and rocks at them.
Cities in Civilization Stage could be based on medieval castles, due to the fact that the cities themselves are surrounded by walls.
The whole stage (including the name) could be a reference to the popular strategy game, Civilization.
Deja vu - if you zoom to other civilizations they look like the creature owning the civilization except for a different color and no clothes on the card.
When using the Global Merger super-power the base cost of the power is 60,000 sporebucks, it states that it "Buys" all the cities, this means each other city would cost 15,000 sporebucks instead of the normally accepted 14,000. If used upon 3 cities the cost is lowered by 12,000 sporebucks which is 3,000 less than if you actually bought the cities for 15,000. This raises the cost of the cities up to 16,000 sporebucks
If you roll the camera over an unclaimed civilization, a Sim City 4 song called "Gritty City" might play.
The insult "Your people are descended from limbless space slugs" is ironic in the sense that all cities are the same species, including your own.
When vehicles are destroyed and turrets are attacked, crew can be seen flying out and dying upon impact with the floor. When boats get destroyed, the crew will fly into the water and drown.
Glitches[]
When you aim a Gadget Bomb at a targeted tribal village, sometimes when the bomb hits it, it isn't destroyed but remains intact.
Sometimes there will be invisible cities, you will have destroyed all the other cities but the bar won't be complete. You look around on the minimap but there will be no cities.
Sometimes when you command large amounts of vehicles they won't do it unless you right click on it again. this can be very annoying. WORKAROUND: do the command for unresponsive vehicles.
Sometimes, the AI-controlled religious nation will have problems with escalating. For example, there's a Blue religious nation converting another city. You can see Blue converting the city with a sizable force on the minimap, but the convert process bar just won't appear, which means Blue will be stuck with converting that city. This can be very useful for hard difficulty because you can completely stop their escalation. Remember though, if you hover your mouse on the city that is under attack, the progress bar will appear and Blue will be able to take the city.
Sometimes, your vehicles still keep their icons even if they no longer exist. You cannot delete them by pressing the red cross as well.
Rarely, religious vehicles can be overwhelmingly overpowered. As we know, religious vehicles deal area damage. When this glitch happens, all religious vehicles cause insanely high AREA DAMAGE (which is usually higher than 100). That means religious nations can dispatch an entire enemy force at ease.
